North Penn Model Aviation Club
"the MAC" since Fall 2003

Meetings are always busy but today's was especially busy! We added a new DX5e and a new Vapor to our fleet today. It was exciting! The Vapor required some re-gluing, as the covering material came loose. Luckily, Trevor recovered his at home and knew exactly what to do.

Trevor and Mark had a fun time tossing around a micro glider Mr.Voicheck built using Vapor guts. The plane is made from 3mm Depron. It needs a motor, and a shaped wing to sustain flight.

Nick finished his biplane and finally saw it fly for the first time. He was very happy.

Lou demonstrated how to properly use an airbrush for painting model airplanes. He's using a $15 Harbor Freight airbrush! The regulator seen in the first picture (bottom middle) is used to finely tune the air pressure. He also brought in a couple planes that he painted. Thank you so much for your time Lou! Lou's demonstration lasted an hour and a half, from 2:45 until 4:15. I had to shoe the kids out of the meeting to make it to class on time.

-Lou has been flying for a little over two years and has some awesome artistic skills when it comes to painting planes. He makes airbrushing look natural.

Pat spent the entire club meeting working on landing light installation on the carrier bed. He cut a  groove in the foam and sunk the lights into it.

Greg brought his new read-to-fly plane to the meeting. Inexpensive models like this are a great way to get someone hooked on this hobby.

Our Fun-Fly was awesome! I hope you made it. We packed the gyms with over 70 pilots from around Lancaster to northern Jersey. It was amazing. Click on the image (you will need Flash) to check out our slideshow. Don't forget to check out the Youtube videos!

Video 1     Video 2

We decorated the display case with hundreds of airplane photos while Brian worked his fastest to complete the katana. We're only 10 days from the event!

We're three weeks away from the fun-fly and preparations are moving along nicely.

Pat built his own bomber plane which dropped mini foam, cartoon-shaped bombs. It was awesome! Pat's sister Eric helped out. Unfortunately, the bomber cracked in half, but was seen flying later in the day. He said he'll be redesigning a plane which will be meant for dropping 'stuff.' It drew quite an audience at our last meeting.

Mark flew the Katana and continued to repair his plane as needed.

After announcing our Fun-Fly a month ago, we needed to start preparing for some indoor flying. Students were frantically building planes to prepare for our event. The event will be similar to our March 2009 event. Hopefully it will grow to a larger fun-fly. We've been promoting it as hard as we can.

Trevor is working on a video to promote the fun-fly. You may see him at the next meeting, or asking people questions while he films them.

Brian was able to get stick time on the Vapor. He was very happy to have the whole gym to himself for flying. Matt also took a few minutes on the Vapor. It is such a neat plane to fly. I wish I had one of my own!

Four weeks until our fun-fly!

Students spent another warm afternoon outside flying planes. Pat rigged a drop mechanism on another biplane, which carried a small toy parachute. He held many of the students attention as he launched the parachute from the plane over and over again.

Tyler tried to repair the Parkzone Citabria. This was after Ryan spent an hour replacing the defective brick. Our elevator servo never worked on the original plane. Since it costs $10 to ship it to Horizon, we decided not to send it back. This is the second time we've had a defective ParkZone plane. Unfortunately the replacement parts were also defective. we will no longer purchase the Micro RTF planes for the club. They break too easily.

Our Vapor is still in great shape despite the flimsy landing gear. Students who are just learning to fly are provided with time to fly the Vapor, as it's the easiest plane to fly  that the club owns.

With the new year started and so many new members I sometimes forget to take pictures. There are so many things to do at club meetings as the adviser.

Students learned how to cut out the bluecor planes using our wire-saw. The students were amazed at how safe the device is.

One of our first club meetings required an in-depth look at our current inventory of model aircraft. Alex ripped his old biplane apart to make a single wing plane.

Pat revamped an old Frog that was laying around. The plane flew great until he smashed it to pieces. It's now in a landfill somewhere.

I rigged up a release mechanism for dropping these inexpensive "nerf-like" darts from the plane. It works very well. The plane flew much better with the 8x6 and the dart. It could barely climb with the 8x4.3 prop.